WORLD No 1 Luke Humphries withstood a fightback from Luke Littler to retain his Players Championship Finals title at Butlins, Minehead, pocketing a first prize of £120,000.

In a repeat of the World Championship and Premier League finals, Humphries led 5-1 and 6-2 before being pegged back to 8-7 - but he promptly reeled off the next three legs to win 11-7 and claim his sixth major title in just 13 months.

Littler was bidding to win back-to-back major ranking titles, having landed his first at the previous week's Grand Slam of Darts in Wolverhampton and he began the final as favourite thanks to a superb run which had seen him average over 100 in every match.

But both players got off to uncharacteristically cagey starts, with Littler particularly struggling to find his potent range until he just had too much work to do.

However, the big disappointment for local fans was the first round exit of Ryan Searle who lost 6-5 to Swedish player Jeffrey de Graff.

The £600,000 ranking major featured 64 players who battled it out in a culmination of the 30 Players Championship events held during the course of the year.

The 17th staging of the event ran from November 22 to 24 at Butlins.